This project implements the first experience in Brazil of a citizen education program for democracy based on the concept of deliberation. This proposal, at the interface of studies in social communication, political science, and education, represents an offshoot of the experiment “Deliberation in public schools: creating deliberative skills”, developed between 2017 and 2020, which involved more than 500 students from public schools in Belo Horizonte (MG) and Belém (PA), which confirmed the possibility of teaching deliberative skills.

In this second phase, the project aims to expand the initiative to other schools in four geographic regions of the country, promoting the protagonism of students to produce videos with recommendations on how to teach and learn deliberative skills. It also intends to develop a set of actions to develop and test mechanisms – such as an online and mobile version of the game “What profile is this?” and digital platforms for discussing the experience among participants from associated schools, with large-scale effects. By bringing together researchers in four regions of Brazil (North, Northeast, Southeast and South) and internationally, the project has the potential to generate an impact in the school environment and contribute to the formulation of public policies aimed at promoting human rights that recognize local injustices. The project connects with the activities of the National Institute of Science and Technology for Democracy and Democratization of Communication (INCT-DDC), especially with the promotion of participation mechanisms, and the National Institute of Science and Technology for Disputes and Information Sovereignties (INCT-DSI), especially with issues of communication with audiences, media literacy and the circulation of fake news. At the international level, the partnership with Professor John W. Gastil, from Pennsylvania State University (USA), a reference for projects for political and civic participation, favors the improvement of the digital platform and the design of guidelines and practical strategies to achieve the proposed objectives. The project also involves very important joint work with the Pontifical Javeriana University in Colombia, through the collaboration of Professor Maria Clara Jaramillo, who replicated the same experiment conducted in the first phase of the Share Project in Bogotá, enhancing practical and theoretical gains with a comparative analysis of the research.

For more information, visit the group’s website, the Media and Public Sphere Research Group (EME).